We used to call it worry

Ilana Lipowicz
Nov 6 · 5 min read

When I think of myself as a kid, I’m hanging upside down on monkey bars, grinning, teeth blue from jolly ranchers. But when I think a little harder, I remember that my childhood wasn’t always so carefree. I worried quite a bit.

I remember once, in the midst of a best friend transition during which I referred to two other six-year-old girls both as my best friend, I cried, worried they would find out and that their feelings would be hurt.

One summer at sleep-away camp, a fantastic hailstorm hit just as my group was headed back from lunch. Reasoning that lunchtime was right around the time that my mom walked the dog, and that my camp was only an hour and a half away from home, I concluded that either my mom, my dog, or both of them had been knocked out by a giant rock of hail from the very same storm.

Every time my parents fought, I worried they were going to divorce. And every time they were late, I worried they’d been in a terrible car accident. I had a penchant for imagining the worst case scenario.

But it was just worry. Not anxiety, something you either have or you don’t. A diagnosis. Something you’ll deal with for your entire life if you have the misfortune of getting tagged with it. Worry was just another feeling, human and fleeting, like all the others.

In high school, people started to be depressed, or have depression. TV and the internet taught me all about depression and the suicide, the wrist-slitting and the drug abuse that apparently followed it. My friends who were experiencing it understood it more deeply than I could. I’ve been lucky to have been mostly spared by depression. It has always come to me for short visits with an obvious cause — a transition, a breakup, or some other loss — and resolved itself within an appropriate time frame.

People didn’t start to throw the word anxiety around like they did depression until college. By then, you could more or less assume that everyone had some degree of depression, anxiety, or both. I suspected I’d experienced both, but I wasn’t sure. When does sadness cross over into depression? When does worry become anxiety?

In January of 2018, I had what can most accurately be described as an anxiety attack. I didn’t know that I was anxious. I had a job, and friends. I was comfortable where I was living and in my daily routine. I was looking forward to a vacation in Argentina in February. That day, I woke up, went for a run, and ate breakfast like every other day. Then I set off to my appointment with my therapist. When I sat down on her couch, I noticed that my breath was labored. I couldn’t breathe without thinking about it, and I couldn’t get enough air. And then my therapist’s face looked off, unusual, like it was vibrating.

More alarming than the attack itself was the month that followed, during which I was convinced that everyone looked wrong. There was this odd glow to people’s faces, as if a projector were casting a dim display of white noise across their faces.

I went to see my doctor, who sent me to the ophthalmologist, who told me I still had perfect vision. I got an MRI of my brain; it came back normal. I went to a dentist, who told me to get a mouth guard — maybe I was grinding my teeth. After a week-long ache along my entire upper back, I started seeing a physical therapist twice a week. I saw a neurologist, who told me it was probably anxiety, and I should try to relax. I continued to see my therapist, who gently suggested mindfulness.

The day of my flight to Argentina was approaching. Still convinced that something was very wrong with me, I asked my doctor if it was safe to go. Yes, she said. You should definitely go.

I can’t tell you the moment, or even the day, that my affliction, as I called it, went away. But somewhere in Buenos Aires, I got distracted for so long that it was able to escape.

Anxiety is both a symptom of post-concussion syndrome and a risk factor. In truly high-stress situations, my penchant for imagining the worst grows a mole that believes the worst is also likely to happen. So three days after my accident, when my head began to feel heavy, I was already convinced that I had done something wrong to bring this on, and that the pressure in my head would never go away.

Here I am two months later, and it’s still here. But I do now believe that it will eventually go away. And I think that anxiety is a part of, but not the whole picture of why this has happened to me.

One thing I’ve heard from many people, including doctors, is that I just need to relax. If I could just relax, I could at least stop it from getting any worse. But telling an anxious person to relax is about as helpful as telling my brain to heal, as in, not at all.

People mean well. They think that anxiety should be the one thing you have control over. I, however, feel in control of just about anything more than I do of anxiety. I know how to handle the other possible contributors to my pain. For my neck, I can strengthen and stretch it out. For my eyes, I can do the vestibular exercises to get them working the right way. For inflammation in my brain, I can eat well and take supplements to help it heal.

But for my anxiety, I have to learn to control my thoughts and feelings. I have to practice self talk and meditation, and I have to actually be able to implement them when I need them. Anxiety is the most difficult of my problems to treat because the remedies are as abstract as the problem.

In order for your insurance to pay for psychological therapy, there needs to be a diagnosis. So on the books, I have anxiety. While it’s helpful for some people, I don’t like to talk about anxiety as something that I have. Sometimes I am anxious, and sometimes I’m not. What I have is the ability to change and to heal. I have determination to do whatever it takes to feel better. I have resilience. I have to work harder than some others to keep from feeling anxious. But it is still just a feeling, like all the others. Human, and fleeting.

Mild Traumatic

Musings of my achy brain, post concussion

Musings of my achy brain, post concussion

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